Because most of them don't really design their own phones, but instead sell what (mostly Chinese) ODMs give them with some small customizations.

I don't know about ShiftPhone, but e.g. Volla just sells rebranded Daria and Gigaset phones, typically marked up by a few hundred Euros to sell some EU-made/privacy/degoogling dream. In reality they are just cheap phones that the ODM does not really care about with Linux kernel and firmware trees that haven't seen any (security) updates in years.

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palata 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh that makes sense. What about e.g. Fairphone?

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microtonal 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Mostly developed (both hardware and software) by their Chinese ODM T2Mobile.

I think they probably have the sales volume where they could negotiate a compatible device with their ODM, but their priorities clearly lie elsewhere.

	▲	grapheneos 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		T2Mobile is likely unable to meet our requirements. T2Mobile are not only designing the phone but even building/signing the firmware and device support code. Fairphone is putting together what they're given by Google (AOSP and GMS) and T2Mobile. Fairphone gets to make high level decisions among the choices T2Mobile is willing to offer. For example, their move to T2Mobile with the Fairphone 4 coincided with the removal of the 3.5mm audio jack.